I came across an article on the Null Set about Making Anime Personas for Firefox, with some excellent examples (that set is listed under Steelbound). I also found rather nice collections by Songbird, Bellas, Kawaii Mooru, and Fleur, to name just a few. I also found huge selections of other science fiction themes, but these should give you the idea.
Building your own seems pretty simple and straightforward; the short version is you create an image each for the top and the bottom of the browser, both 3000 pixels wide, with the top at 200 pixels tall and the bottom 100 pixels. For slightly more detailed information, check the Persona Create and Test page. These are too much fun; I think the trick is building ones that look good but don’t interfere too much with the tool bars. If you need to install the personas Add-on, you will find it here.
Just a few fun videos, based on modifying observable reality in non-standard ways. The key for both of these is only partly to use the latest evolution in communications and data processing to achieve the desired result. Having the latest tech is good, but what is critical is using that tech in ways never before tried to go for desired results nobody else thought of before. The embarrassing part is how obvious it all looks once you finally see it in action; why didn’t any of us think of that before?
The first is the MIT FlyFire Project, which lives at the Senseable City Lab site. Now that sensors of all types, from static units like traffic cams and mobile units like cell phones are ubiquitous, privacy is right out the window; but new ways of gathering, displaying, and using data are in our hands. The helicopter-optics project itself combines the emergent behavior of the swarm of drones interacting with the environment with the top-down control imposed by the computer orchestrating the display patterns. Learning to program this combination will be challenging but most worthwhile.
The second video is a glimpse at how David Byrne approaches ways to share an appreciation of music. In this instance, by converting an entire building into a musical instrument, and allowing interested parties to sit at the keyboard and play the building. The subtle layer below that one is the fact that every child or adult who sits at a control panel and wrings music (no mater how pitiful) out of a multi-story structure will never again think of it as a box they might be inside of, or as part of the background. From then on, every building they see will become an instrument they might play, which means an interconnected whole that can be manipulated to achieve a desired result. The more people that have that epiphany, the more minds there are working to build our future; and that is a GOOD thing, trust me on this.
This one was too much fun, so I had to include it here. The Embed-permitted version is courtesy of Veoh: this is Kirsten Dunst doing a remake of the classic Vapors song Turning Japanese. This one was even filmed in Akihabara! Strangely enough, this video was put together as part of a museum exhibit in London. For some reason the video seems to be blocked on the jstrider.net server, but it plays just fine on JStrider.Info, or you can watch it on YouTube if you are so inclined.
Yes, a boatload of props from Stargate SG1 and Stargate Atlantis are going up for auction over at The PropWorx and on ebay over the next few months, according to SciFi Wire. They also got the auction team to list the 20 coolest things up for grabs, which include a Thor puppet, a MALF, and Ronon’s blaster. I am thinking I probably need some Zat guns… I should also mention that tonight’s episode of Sci-Fi Science on Discoveries Science Channel is all about How to be a Superhero.
Referred to as the iVictrola, this brass and walnut construct bookmarks the 20th century audio technology span. Mount your 21st century iPhone/iPod in the slot and hit play; the 19th century Victrola brass horn picks up the audio output and amplifies it just as the original did, acoustically. While the only production run of this device I know of was put on sale on December 8th, 2009, and was sold out by December 9th, 2009 (I am guessing a Production Run of about a dozen or so, but I have no real way of being sure if that is correct), it is physically simple and can be recreated by anyone from first principles.
If you find yourself flying through D.C. with a layover at Dulles Airport of 2 hours or more, you can take a shuttle over to the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. Located on the Dulles grounds, it is another branch of the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian. Among the exhibits there is the US Space Shuttle Enterprise, and all the satellite, spacecraft, and aircraft displays you would expect. But there are a few other SciFi goodies as well, including the most complete classic ray gun collection I have ever seen, a small assortment of Robots, a phone booth in the shape of a Mercury capsule, and an R2-D2 USPS mailbox.
